Nearly 25 years ago, HonestReporting began its mission by taking on The New York Times over a photo it published of a young man — bloodied and battered — crouching beneath a club-wielding Israeli policeman. The caption identified him as a Palestinian victim of recent riots — with the clear implication that the Israeli soldier was the one who beat him.
The effort to fix the incorrect reporting started with the boy’s father writing a letter to the Times, explaining the truth about his son, a Jewish student from Chicago who was pulled from his Jerusalem taxi by a mob of Arabs who beat and stabbed him and his friends. A half-hearted correction was issued about “an American student in Israel” — not a Jew beaten by Arabs. Only after additional public outrage did the Times reprint Tuvia Grossman’s picture — this time with the proper caption — along with a full article detailing his near-lynching at the hands of Palestinians.
Fast forward to last Thursday, when the Times put on its front page a moving photo of a skeletal child, Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, cradled in his mother’s arms. The photo, taken by a photographer for a Turkish news agency, looked like a gut-wrenching snapshot of starvation in Gaza.
The underlying message was that Israel was deliberately starving Gazan children.
Read More: Another Photo. Another Lie.
It took five days of pressure from the Israeli consulate in New York and organizations like HonestReporting for the Times to admit their mistake.
“After publication of the article, The Times learned from his doctor that Mohammed also had pre-existing health problems,” an editor’s note added to the article said.
A New York Times spokeswoman issued this statement on Tuesday night:
Children in Gaza are malnourished and starving, as New York Times reporters and others have documented. We recently ran a story about Gaza’s most vulnerable civilians, including Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, who is about 18 months old and suffers from severe malnutrition. We have since learned new information, including from the hospital that treated him and his medical records, and have updated our story to add context about his pre-existing health problems. This additional detail gives readers a greater understanding of his situation. Our reporters and photographers continue to report from Gaza, bravely, sensitively, and at personal risk, so that readers can see firsthand the consequences of the war.”
In other words, the New York Times ran a picture without properly checking the truth behind it. The Times continues to stand behind the underlying message against Israel that it tried to convey by running the photo in the first place.
Instead of being self-critical about its reporters and photographers who got the story wrong, the Times praised their bravery and sensitivity.
No, New York Times, the new information does not merely add context about Mohammed’s pre-existing health problems. It proves that the way he looks has nothing to do with Israel and the war that began with the October 7 massacre.
Thank you for your non-apology, but the damage of this blood libel has already been done. It has been weaponized and used to demonize Israel around the world, resulting in dangerous policy changes by the leaders of France and the United Kingdom and the president of the United States saying “That’s real starvation. I see it, and you can’t fake that.”
The New York Times’ lies about the photograph and the resulting international condemnation of Israel led to Hamas hardening its positions in negotiations to end the war. There are up to 20 live Israeli hostages, who are actually known to be starving, whose horror has been prolonged by the irresponsibility of the Times and other media outlets that ran the photo without doing their due diligence.
There have also been antisemitic incidents throughout the world since the photo ran, and the connection between the rapid rise in anti-Jewish violence and its connection to dishonest reporting since October 7, 2023, has been well documented.
Instead of running a front-page apology online and in print and showing true accountability, the Times hid its correction by posting it on its PR account, which has 89,000 followers on X, not its regular account with 55 million followers.
The Times also has not taken back another incorrect report, published Saturday, claiming in a headline that is shameful since it’s not satirical: “No Proof Hamas Routinely Stole U.N. Aid, Israeli Military Officials Say.”
The article quotes unnamed, anonymous “military sources.” Even after official IDF spokesperson Nadav Shoshani said and proved that the opposite was true, there has still been no admission from the Times that it made yet another dangerous mistake. There has been no statement by the newspaper’s spokeswoman and no editor’s note.
But at least with its statement about the photo, The Times did somewhat more than nothing to update its readers. Other media outlets have not even done that.
Please contact other media and demand corrections that include crucial facts.
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